


Hope That You

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Series: Rise Up [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Culture is Alien, Alien Values, Alternia-Focused, Alternian Empire, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Bigotry, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Gore, Hemospectrum, Impressment, Military, Minor Character Death, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Quadrant Confusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which a Foolish Violetblooded Miles Gloriosa Ends Up with an Assortment of Rightfully Pissed-off Early Conscripts Who Proceed to Plan to Take Over the Ship, in an Entirely Legitimate Manner, in Order to Gift to the Heiress a Flagship in the Middle of an Effort to Invade an Unusually Stubborn Alien Planet, and Including a Complex Quadrant Flipping Romance between the Two Leaders of the Takeover, a Goldblood and a Violetblood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope That You

**Author's Note:**

> The title—like the titles of everything else in Rise Up—is from a song, though instead of the His Name Is Alive picks used so far, this one comes from Radiohead. Points to anybody who recognizes sources, and sometimes the rest of the song the line's from will provide hints. Also, there may be occasional edits to maintain continuity because we're going nonlinar with this and _chances are_. Because Karkat deserves a bit of time less miserable!

♋

The worst part of being the 'best friend' of a fuckass with a sopor-soaked think pan, in Karkat's current opinion—subject to change without notice—was that it meant going down to the supply depot with him and playing lusus to him _just_ to make sure he doesn't forget to by things not face paint, sopor, Faygo, or the supplies for making sopor pies.

At least clothes were not on this perigee’s shopping list. Whatever _else_ he could say about Gamzee's self-care skills (most of which could be summed up as ' _what_ skills?') the purpleblood was the only troll Karkat knew of who was his age and _still_ smaller. Karkat knew his own height was genetic, he even had under his sweater—much to his embarrassment, really—vestigial grub legs, normally proud signs that you had been a grub _good_ at getting food down your protein chute but fuck _that_. Karkat had _none_ of the build trolls who'd been fat happy grubs were supposed to have—none of the height, none of the muscles coming easy, not even the fucking _horns_ that they were supposed to get.

He was _scrawny_ , nubby horns and slim limbs, and that he had the build to seriously fuck up others' shit—if he was willing to learn moves suited to him like Eridan had suggested (“stop glubbin' up our wwonderful ashy hate by bein' so glubbin' pathetic”) and ignore all the whole stereotype of the big musclebound threshecutioner heroes had in the romance stories. Even the ones in the shit that was based off of true stories were built like Equius (whom Karkat later spotted working his way thought the produceblock) and fuck Eridan and his claims that wasn't true, Ancestors and Descendants and all that shit was just a highblood myth, and so what if Troll Liv Tyler was supposed to be a Descendant of Troll Guinevere? She certainly didn't _look_ like…

Well. As long as Gamzee still got proper clothes and all, everything was _fine_. Karkat knew none of the other assholes would really quite be bothered with making sure that Gamzee kept his shit together enough to _buy some fucking clothes_ when he needed them, so he won the fucking lottery. It was only later that he finally realized the truth, and thankfully for all parties _before_ Eridan felt it entirely necessary to find out if Sollux had a Clue-by-Four to be borrowed.

This was _especially_ fortunate—though it would be even longer before it sunk in for anybody—as Sollux's preferred method for ensuring that hints made it through the think pans of particularly clueless lusers was not the traditional piece of wooden building materials.

Some of the lusers he dealt with had _very_ thick think pans.

And did not realize that such an item would be classed as a tool—and thus not end up in the strife specibus—or be manually applied for the visceral satisfaction. Karkat had to admit that it had been…enjoyable to learn this, primarily as it was not _his_ think pan at the receiving end, and if it wasn't for the fucking moron…

There was a certain amount of satisfaction even still that he'd managed to get Gamzee to wear _decent_ clothes—even if the sopor-panned clown had gone mostly for, well…but Karkat would (very grudgingly and after much application of Sollux's Luster Adjustment Tool) admit that more normal trollish clothes would look weird on Gamzee anyway. He was a SkInNy MoThErFuCkEr, as he put it—bit slow putting on height for his caste, at best, but Karkat suspected that it was less genes and blood and more the fucking sopor pie habit.

If he ever managed to talk Gamzee into stopping that shit, he'd…

…maybe he ought to suggest that would get a smile out of him. Gamzee had decided it'd take a miracle, and Gamzee _liked_ miracles.

But. Shopping first. He was glad they could skip the clothes vendorblock (after making sure Gamzee's choice of pants could still be gotten, and oh thank the mirthful messiahs they could even be ordered by the lot from a grubtop, shipped by drone to your hive and all) and the musical instruments vendorblock had already made it clear that Gamzee could just buy his horns by the case without coming in. By yells.

The vendorblock where Gamzee got his facepaint (run, it seemed, by a troll whose official job was to help young trolls find the Mirthful Messiahs) was nervewracking for Karkat, though it seemed that there was some provision in Gamzee's cult for going gray—though fuck it being penance for anything though maybe he could get away with pretending to be one of the rare lowblood converts, they seemed to feel that any converts ought to be at the end of their To Cull lists. Except facepaint and fuck it, he wasn't quite that desperate.

Gamzee thanked him by a visit to the media vendorblock, and been chill enough to let Karkat and Eridan trade a few movie recommendations—Gamzee just wasn't much fun to watch shit with, he was too fucking easy to please and had trouble following anything more complex than the pap meant for little wrigglers. Though Karkat _did_ appreciate the jingoistic happy cheerful plot of one of Gamzee's favories. _My Little Hoofbeasts_ had a lot more going for it, with how it focused on the moirallegiances between the various hoofbeasts aided them in their ongoing battle against various evil aliens…and he would vitriolically deny that all the palerom in such a silly for-wrigglers series sometimes yanked on his bloodpusher's cords enough for him to be moved to tears.

Karkat never did quite figure out exactly why Gamzee wanted to stop at the computer vendorblock, though. He suspected one of the lamps they had placed right where people passing after the Juggalo religious supplies vendorblock was Gamzee's goal. He'd been too busy talking to Sollux to quite know, the usual friendliness between the two wavering weakly pale-ashen, never fully sliding darker.

Then, food, actual real food, and if Gamzee insisted on treating him to some as well shut the fuck up and accept it. He could probably get away with not accepting much Faygo but if Gamzee started trying to get him to eat sopor pies—alright _yes_ he was fucking short for a troll he knew that, he was sure he'd finally get a growth spurt when he finally reached his 6th sweep—he was fucked. Once Gamzee got that idea wedged into his think pan there was no prying it out.

(Later it was discovered that there was, in fact, one method but it also caused Karkat to flip his shit on account of it being very improper to have one of the bulgemunching idiots you auspice turn around and play auspice for you and your moirail with a piece of construction material.)

He managed to talk Gamzee into giving him only _one_ bottle of Faygo, though it was the bright red type—and fuck anybody who thinks it's for any reason other than not really liking Faygo (though he knows Gamzee does and it's his favorite flavor and it means a lot that he wants to share it) and not wanting to have to repeat this any sooner than they have to. Gamzee doing his own grocery shopping was so fucking high up the list of Shit Not to Go Through Again that it was making its own orbit around the green moon, like a troll who had just fucking ate an entire 'coon's worth of sopor baked into pies (less a slice's worth, actually) _and not a fucking thing else_ and fuck that shit.

Also, fuck anybody who wanted to ask about how that had gone.

He was _not_ going to let himself ever be gotten to try any of a sopor pie again ever.

At least it had taken up most of the wait in line. Karkat was not quite going to complain—he knew the most likely reason why Equius looked to be buying for two, and damn it Karkat was not going to admit how romantic he thought the indigoblood taking care of his moirail was.

(It was eventually concluded that teasing Karkat about the irony of having recognized the behavior more in others than in Gamzee—regardless of the validity of Karkat's claims that Gamzee might well have done it for no particular reason other than just being a chill motherfucker who wanted his best bro still around and reminding everyone that Gamzee had made some effort to help Tavros there as well—was not worth the hearing damage. It was, however, sometimes quite worth it when he needed distracting to a more harmless topic to rant loudly about.)

It started right after Equius had finished dealing with the delivery drones—fuck, he _really_ wished he had enough cash to not have to be limited to what he could haul himself. That this hadn't been a problem in at least a sweep—one of the benefits of deciding that fuck, _somebody_ had to make sure Gamzee stayed in something vaguely resembling decent condition and shit it looked like he was the poor fucker who got that job.

He didn't hate Gamzee _that_ way. He had some aspirations towards a nice kismesisstude with the purpleblood—even if it might be a shitty one, what with Gamzee just laughing when he got as close to confessing his feelings. Perhaps someday maybe even Karkat would laugh at how much of an idiot Past Karkat was for being confused.

It might even be because Future Karkat found it honestly funny.

But Present Karkat was checking the freshly-arrived message and kicking himself for failing to notice something else entirely:

GC: 1NCOM1NG SH1P 4T TH3 SUPPLY D3POT. G3T OUT NOW B3FOR3 TH3Y S3ND 1N TH31R NOT 3X4CTLY 1LL3G4L PR3SS G4NG!

…Oh, _fuck_. His life was fucked up enough—a glance confirmed the worst, Terezi was definitely talking about theirs and…

Fuck _fuck **fuck**_ there went the fucking security measures, and even the beautifully pale gesture of Equius giving up his chance of escaping to make sure his moirail would get the supplies he'd bought her wasn't enough to calm Karkat.

He'd _heard_ about this sort of shit. Some asshole highblooded captain got it into his head that he needed a bit more of a crew, and it'd be a really fucking wonderful idea to just grab a bunch of wrigglers big enough to be worth the trouble to fill it out a bit instead of being a _normal_ asshole highblooded captain and waiting for them to be adults.

Fuck…he'd have to apologize to Eridan for telling him that he couldn't believe any troll could be more of a douchebag than him. Eridan had pretty much said he thought it was a glubbin' stupid idea, shore to catch you cullbait and he would not sink that deep. It'd been so fucking nice to tell himself that it was just another fucking rumor for making wrigglers be even more paranoid.

He settled for being utterly pissed that this douchebag adult had his shit enough together to have the roundup be nice and fast and effective, herding every wriggler whose shitty luck was to still be in when the shutters slammed shut into one of the open spaces. They were even doing some sorting already, cullbait one side and the fucking lucky wrigglers who'd made it out of the prelims for a shot at the fucking brass ring of early conscription the other.

Karkat was so fucking glad he was too young for his blood color to show in his eyes—he was sure that the only thing that had kept him from getting shoved into the former was just that. He really didn't even quite process Gamzee's soft 'I wAnT a PiE (honk)' as the two of them just naturally gravitated to where there were other trolls they knew.

…Karkat couldn't help feeling in agreement with Gamzee about wanting a sopor pie. He wasn't missing that the cullbait side was getting…well, he really fucking hoped Terezi had been absconding the fuck away when she sent that message, because she was on the short list of trolls he'd really rather not personally get to see culled.

Fuck, he even was just _fine_ being stuck close to Eridan, Sollux, Equius, and Gamzee. And fuck if he was quite surprised. Tavros would be so on the cullbait side, just like Terezi. This just wasn't the sort of place Nepeta and Feferi would be found—not when they had moirails who'd do it for them, and Feferi had shit she needed to be doing. (In around a perigee, Karkat would finally realize that what Equius had been sweating over that first time he'd run into Karkat shepherding Gamzee through the supply depot was that he wished he could manage to be as good a moirail, to get _his_ palemate to take a break from her usual routine to do the shopping with him. The bulkhead was fortunate this time, and did not gain additional dents.) Aradia and Kanaya he didn't expect to see here—they lived closer to a different supply depot.

Really, the only one of his circle of friends—and oh _fuck_ he used that term loosely sometimes—whom he'd not mind seeing here would be Vriska, and that was mostly because he'd expect to see her on the cullbait side. He was fine with that idea; she was the only one of the cripples he knew whom he'd not crushed on. Though the crush on Tavros never went anywhere, not even far enough for him to figure out if it was pale or flush; who the fuck knew somebody could manage to be _irritatingly_ pitiful?

He didn't pay much attention to the chatter—Equius was just being his usual sweaty self with all his fucking things about the hemospectrum, and Sollux and Eridan were…

“…Fuck. You two, now is not the fucking time for a last-minute caliginous hookup!” The blackflirting stopped in favor of both trolls looking at him, Sollux in…surprise? Eridan, though, had that _happy_ sparkle in his eyes that Karkat knew all too fucking well, the one he got when the film they were watching hit a romantic moment he particularly liked—and the bulkhead was _not_ spared a dent when Karkat realized one of the common threads in Eridan's tastes there, because he ought to have known—before he hugged Sollux and Karkat in excitement.

Fuck. Just…fuck. He and Eridan had kept joking about their relationship being a two-wheeled auspisticism, and who the fuck had the missing kismesis so it'd go all properly ashen instead of this awkward shitty thing where neither of them could figure out who was supposed to be all ashy but…fuck…and the timing.

Though Equius's face made it worth it. He looked like Gamzee had just hit him between the horns with one of his clubs.

He managed to finish flushing his bile sack—in what was in his own mind a magnificent rant and in the rest of the universe's opinion mostly incoherent angry yelling with fucks liberally mixed in—in time for the press gang to be getting the show proper going.

The first thing he noticed about the purpleblood bitch who stepped up to give the fucking Welcome Early Recruits speech was that she took less care of her face-paint than Gamzee did. It was a monument to how much fucking time he spent talking to Gamzee (and fuck you Future Karkat for laughing at Past Karkat being shitty at recognizing serendipity properly) that he knew that it said a fucking lot about any clown cultist when you saw the state of their face—and that there ought to be no fucking way that somebody could manage to be worse at it sober than Gamzee was after his _worst_ pie binges.

Her rack—both the one on her head and the one on her chest—was not fucking impressive either, even if she carried herself like she thought she was some sort of hot subjuggulator with a rack like a star, and her hair looked like she styled it with a dull sickle. Her symbol even looked like something a brain-damaged wriggler might draw before some drone culled it in a fit of mercy.

It was hate at first sight, probably—he thought—something she wanted to garner, unfortunately the effect was thrown by the fact that his hate was most definitely platonic and not in an ashen way either. It was that cold, _want it dead_ sort that he hadn't thought actually existed outside what he'd considered terribly-written tragic blackroms, where the protagonist falls in to beautiful caliginous hate with the antagonist, who feigns reciprocation only to reveal that it was all a ruse to lure the protagonist in, and get him close enough to kill for whatever fucking reason—revenge, getting to the antagonist's real hate, or most often something garbled because the fucking hack has a think pan full of shit.

(Eventually, he would be rather disappointed to learn, secondhand, that Sollux had culled her and by sheer fucking accident—and it had been a sufficiently impressively _stupid_ way to get your fucking ass culled that nobody was blaming the goldblood for it. “A glubbin' legless wwrigler could'a dodged that.”)

And oh, _fuck_ , his life was going to stay fucking consistent. Why the fuck did she have to decide that the perfect spot to give her speech—and Karkat so fucking hoped it was a scripted one, because he recognized so fucking much of the speech she was giving. Though…yes, mangled line here, that part made _no fucking sense_ , and…

…and Gamzee was shooshing him worriedly, fuck. Karkat managed, mostly by dint of knowing this was the fucking shittiest time for a loud, angry rant, to calm down just enough to avoid fucking up that badly this fast. He knew enough to know they'd check his blood color—hemoanonymity be fucked—and maybe they'd be in too much of a fucking hurry to abscond to cull his sorry mutant ass.

Probably not. Karkat knew his fucking luck.

And now the speech was winding down. Sollux was looking like the last time Karkat had tried to talk hacking with him, Eridan like Feferi had stuffed one of her cuttlefish down his pants, and…well, Karkat supposed it was a good thing that Gamzee _hadn't_ recognized the adult's speech as a mangled mash-up. If she was still going to go by the script—loose and cribbed as it was—they'd be getting herded off and fuck, would it be good or bad if he was gotten aboard before they got around to cutting him to see the color he bled?

…Wait. She was going off her mangled script.

Why was she grabbing some cobaltblood from the cullbait…?

Ah. Demonstration of why to be fucking terrified of her.

Some part of Karkat's think pan, the part _not_ too busy going for panicked emergency shutdown, noted with a bit of admiration that she had good spread with the gore. Cobalt blood and scraps of flesh _all_ over him…


End file.
